Zend_Validate_Alnum allows you to validate if a given value contains
only alphabetical characters and digits. There is no length limitation for the input
you want to validate.
The following options are supported for Zend_Validate_Alnum:
allowWhiteSpace: If whitespace characters are allowed. This option defaults to
FALSE
A basic example is the following one:
<?php
$validator = new Zend_Validate_Alnum();
if ($validator->isValid('Abcd12')) {
// value contains only allowed chars
} else {
// false
}
Per default whitespaces are not accepted because they are not part of the alphabet. Still, there is a way to accept them as input. This allows to validate complete sentences or phrases.
To allow the usage of whitespaces you need to give the
allowWhiteSpace option. This can be done while creating an instance
of the validator, or afterwards by using setAllowWhiteSpace().
To get the actual state you can use getAllowWhiteSpace().
<?php
$validator = new Zend_Validate_Alnum(array('allowWhiteSpace' => true));
if ($validator->isValid('Abcd and 12')) {
// value contains only allowed chars
} else {
// false
}
When using Zend_Validate_Alnum then the language which the user
sets within his browser will be used to set the allowed characters. This means when your
user sets de for german then he can also enter characters like
ä, ö and ü additionally
to the characters from the english alphabet.
Which characters are allowed depends completly on the used language as every language defines it's own set of characters.
There are actually 3 languages which are not accepted in their own script. These languages are korean, japanese and chinese because this languages are using an alphabet where a single character is build by using multiple characters.
In the case you are using these languages, the input will only be validated by using the english alphabet.